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Yolanda Andrade

Posted on 13 de April de 2023 by nr

Dios es bisexual, Oaxaca, 1994

NR 17 Global Virtue · Spring Summer 2023
Published · 032

Feature · Yolanda Andrade
Words · Sara van Bussel

Street photography and cultural identity

Yolanda Andrade (b.1950) is a Mexican photographer and one of the most prominent figures in the artistic landscape of Latin America. After graduating from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, in 1977, Andrade developed a career as a street photographer, experimenting with both analogue and digital photography, gaining international recognition as one of the few artists capable to capture the identity of a specific city and culture.

An accomplished teacher of photography, Andrade has taught since 1992 at the Escuela de Fotografia Nacho López and Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, as well as the Instituto Tecnológico of Monterrey, Mexico. Among other accolades, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in 1994 as well as grants from the Mexican National Endowment for Culture and the Arts to fund her publications and projects in 1993, 1997, 2000 and 2003. Her work has appeared in more than ten photographic books, including Los velos transparentes, las transparencias veladas (1988) and Pasión mexicana / Mexican passion (2002).

Atras del escenario, 1991

Your work fits in the broad category of documentary photography, or as you prefer calling it, street photography. Can you tell me about how you started and what prompted you to photograph in the first place?

I started taking photographs at an early age. I enjoyed photographing my cousins with an old camera, which I was the only one to use. I remember that I went to the camera store to have the film developed and asked to have a new one installed. I started working when I was 15 years old, when as a gift to myself I bought a Kodak Retinette IA. It was a fine camera, manufactured in Germany, and you had to set the shutter speed, the lens opening and the distance. I learned the basics reading the instruction manual, and following what the film box said about the conditions of light: sunny, open shadow, shadow, etcetera. I started by capturing vacation shots and simple moments taken from my daily life.

Afterwards, until 1973, my interest was to study theatre and movies. I attended an acting workshop for about three years. That was the year when my mother died and I had a series of changes in my life, which made me lose interest in what I thought was a vocation in theatre art. I needed to find a new interest related to the creative fields besides my daily job, so I turned my eyes again to photography. In the lab of a photo club in Mexico City I learned how to develop film and how to print in black and white, with the aid of photo magazines. In 1976 I decided that I wanted to make my passion a true profession, so I went to study photography at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. It was at this institution that I got to meet the most important street photographers of the time, like Robert Frank, Walker Evans and Lee Friedlander, among others, whose photo books made a great impact in my later work as a street photographer.

El fusil, CDMX 1987

Looking at an overview of your pictures there is a clear switch around the year 2000, in which you suddenly leave black and white analogue photography for digital and colour. Could you tell me what prompted this change in your practice and in what way it affected your work?

Switching to digital cameras and colour was going to happen sooner or later. I think that for some time I was reluctant to make the change, but with an invitation that Mexican photographer Pedro Meyer made to a group of photographers to make a digital book in one day, which meant to shoot the images, design the book and upload it to internet the same night, prompted me to buy my first digital camera. At first, it was a slow process because I had to learn a new technique, but after a while I became fascinated by the colours in my pictures and finding a new way of seeing. This was the beginning of a new phase for me; traveling abroad became more frequent and photographing other places besides Mexico City was a refreshing new start as a photographer. Walking the streets of new cities, discovering new surroundings made me feel as excited as when I printed my first black and white photograph in the darkroom.

Cebras Tijuana, 1998

Talking about your working process, it’s clear that you think in terms of series, every single picture is part of a broader thematic umbrella, in the attempt to tell a story or simply to convey the impression of a specific cultural phenomenon. Your passion for photo books is therefore explained: they allow you to deliver your work to the fullest. Thinking in these terms, when do you know when a work is finished?

I would like to add something to your previous question. My interest in photo books started when I was studying at the Visual Studies Workshop, where there was a whole library and research centre that allowed us to explore the best photo books in the history of photography. But to have a book of my photographs published was a complex issue. The new digital technology opened to me the opportunity to play, explore, design and publish small, limited edition photo books on digital press. This way of editing my own books allowed me to publish a second edition, gave me the freedom to change the sequence or decide to let out some photographs or add new ones. To answer your question, I think it’s hard to know when a work is finished, as you keep producing images from recent shootings or you rediscover some pictures from reviewing old work.

Modelo de fotógrafos, 1993

In general, the medium of photography is the attempt to freeze time: how does this practice relate to memory, and the time passing in an ever-frenetic world that constantly changes?

Every image, at least in my work, is a fragment of a memory of what I’ve seen and experienced in my life. One single photograph, even in the fast passing of time we are dealing with in our contemporary world, contains several layers of information about what we remember, what we observe in the actual taking of a photograph, and what we add when we edit and process the image. These actions are actually like a blending of the past, present and future.

Guerrillera gay, CDMX, 1994

“What intrigues me more about photography is to freeze an instant in the flow of time, and turn it into an ever-lasting image.”

Relating to this, we talked about social media and the way we perceive images nowadays, consuming enormous amounts of visual information at a high speed. I am curious to know, how do you think this new fruition method impacts social work?

Artefacts like cell phones, with high quality cameras to take photographs, are evolving at a fast pace every moment, offering automatic programs that produce perfect and beautiful images at the hands of millions of people around the world. They are the equivalent of the first Kodak cameras made for the amateurs. Perhaps, in this case, the themes are the same as in the past: family shots, vacation, social gatherings, sunsets and outstanding landscapes, but far away from the work of photographers, who are dedicated to build a body of work.

“In my opinion, the over production of ‘good’ or ‘beautiful’ images by amateurs complicates the comprehension of photography by the general public, especially when they are exhibited in galleries or museums.”

In a previous interview, while describing the first years of your work and the photographs you took in Mexico City, you stated that:

‘Life in the streets of Mexico City is the common denominator of my photographs. What I propose is the presentation, from a personal viewpoint, of different aspects of Mexican culture: images of death, religious processions, political events, social life, street theatre, popular culture, sexual identity and the combat against AIDS. The sum of all these themes also constitutes a visual autobiography.’

In what ways does your work constitute an autobiographical reflection? How do you combine the individual with the collective?

All my photographs reflect my interests, my ideas, my way of thinking, as well as my experiences and my personal history. All together they are a sort of autobiography where the personal and the collective come together, creating one single story.

Lorca, 1994

Credits

Photographs · Courtesy of Yolanda Andrade

Jon Rafman

Posted on 13 de April de 2023 by nr

Counterfeit Poast, 2022 4K stereo video 23:39 min MSPM JRA 49270 film still

NR 17 Global Virtue · Spring Summer 2023
Published · Print Page 024

Feature · Jon Rafman
Words · Lorenzo Ottone

Artificial bestiary for a collapsing present

The Seventeenth-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico argued that history unfolded in cycles, with every period of decay being succeeded by one of growth. According to his view such transitions were guided by the hand of God. Fast forward 300 and counting years and, despite the latter statement sounding rather outdated, this conversation still sparks when contemplating the works of Jon Rafman.

Although the Canadian-born artist, videographer and essayist is an illustrious face of what, since 2009, has been labelled as Post-Internet art, his works retain a powerful Medieval aura. The same shared by the bestiaries of the Middle Ages, by the haunting dreamlike visions of Hieronymus Bosch, of Dante’s Divine Comedy or Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus. But also the street scenes of Flemish paintings, punctuated by a cornucopia of characters sampled from real life and rearranged with moral meanings. As a matter of fact, Rafman recently hosted a performance in which organist Hampus Lindwall live soundtracked one of his films in the evocative setting of the 11th century Swiss Church of Rougemont, as part of Gstaad’s Elevation 1049.

Rafman’s long-lasting fascination with such iconography actually stems from the present and from his consideration that we’re living through Medieval times. As a society — according to the artist — we are helplessly heading back to a neo-feudal culture in which ‘It feels at times as if the social contract is about to rip apart.To quote Brecht: “Indeed I live in the dark ages! A guileless word is an absurdity”’.

His oeuvre does no doubt retain an anguishing and disturbing visual element shared by much Medieval art, in which life blended with the realm of fantasy, religion and oral tales. The internet is indeed the closest expression now existing to that approach to world-building and vernacular storytelling, of which one of the greatest examples is Rafman’s Dream Journal, 2016-2019.

The occasion to meet the artist comes on the occasion of his exhibition 𝐸𝒷𝓇𝒶𝒽 𝒦’𝒹𝒶𝒷𝓇𝒾 — which reads ‘abracadabra’ — at London Sprüth Magers.

He is wearing a suit, which may look unexpectedly refined for someone otherwise associated with an iconography made of internet-era American kid bedrooms, with computer keys encrusted with dirt and crisp crumbs, the same he uses to communicate with the press. It is a boxy suit, with cropped wide trousers, as you’d picture an artist in his early forties wearing.

Despite a broader audience may at first dismiss Rafman’s work as superficial — or even childish — as a consequence of its memetic stance, his words encompass a depth as profound as his carnet of references. They flow with the rapidity of the internet language, and as copious as the amount of work he produces.

His art is, first of all, rooted in an observation of society, which the Canadian analyses with the critical spirit of a philosopher.
The most stringent issue that seems to equally fascinate and concern him is the fragmentation of contemporary culture and consciousnesses, which since his early works Rafman has been exploring through the creative potential of machine learning processes. His Instagram bio reads, ‘Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined’, which is exactly what his artworks do.

AI is the tool that enables him to observe society, like a camera.

‘I believe that similarly to how photography liberated painting from factual representation, AI image-making has the potential to do something equally revolutionary by forcing art to push itself beyond its own self-perceived boundaries.’

Rafman jokes quoting Renoir. ‘Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.’ However, although AI image generation can foster a new culture, he hopes that ‘questions about the broader historical implications on these developments are raised’.

When looking at some of his latest works — like the Club Angels II and Club Angels III series or Technocrats II — one is left wondering where the line of demarcation between the real and the hyperreal lies. The pieces, which at first appear like painted canvases, feature print AI-generated images to problematise ‘the expected sterility of algorithmically generated images, bringing their abstract digitally into physical materiality’.

‘That space is where I seek the most interesting territories to explore,’ says Rafman. ‘The virtual and the real represent a dichotomy, but in the world we live in it no longer exists.’

According to the artist, the German word aufhebung, which contains opposites, meaning abolition, transcendence, cancellation or fulfilment, informs his practice. ‘In my work, I try to reach a state of aufhebung between bathos and pathos, the ironic and the romantic, the physical and the virtual, and so on. That tension is mobilised in my media choices in the paintings as well.’

This theme emerges in Counterfeit Poast, a film composed of a series of character profiles where AI-generated images are animated using face-tracking iPhone apps, resulting in plausible stories that escalate into the realm of the hyperreal, equally disturbing and witty. To stand out is that of a single man obsessed since his childhood with teen idol Jonathan Brandis, to the point he ends up mystifying reality by forging the actor’s otherwise missing suicidal letter and psycho-physically morphing into Brandis himself. The opus encapsulates all of Rafman’s fascination for all things gravitating between the alienation of the individual and the sense of communal belonging of his chosen iconography.

In Rafman’s view, the opus ‘paints a portrait of a world where the very grounds of reality have become destabilised, a world where everyone has their own algorithmically tailor-made Reality fed to them.’

One can’t truly grasp whether such impossibility to trace a sociologically valid universal theory of present culture concerns Rafman, or whether he thrives on this chaos. Surely, the progressive fragmentation of universal symbols and icons and the increasing ‘niche-isation’ of culture is a reflection at the core of his practice. Especially for someone whose artistic research has been widely based upon permutations of appropriated content, spanning from fine art to mass marketing material. One of his most praised and extended works, 9 Eyes (2009-ongoing), systematically used Google Earth screenshots, for instance.

‘In the past we had the Church, the Bible, Greek myths and a set of languages that every educated person could understand. Even Andy Warhol’s symbols of language, the post-’50s mono-culture icons of Hollywood, are not available to us anymore. Now you have Twitch and Tik Tok stars, who can make millions but nobody has heard of them. Music is fragmented, every fetish, and every little thing is fragmented. So, I use the Internet language which I think is the closest to universal language we have.’

With the frequent sampling of elements of Internet and pop culture, the ethical dilemma of copyright and appropriation may open a multi-faceted debate. However, Rafman’s attitude towards the topic demonstrates how, despite the contemporary relevance of the work, his approach comes a long way.

‘I’m most curious about the social effects and the revelations they contain about our expectations of art both individually and as a society. When you take a bunch of things and put them together in a new way, that’s not even appropriation; it’s some new hybrid. That’s how culture works, through miscegeny, that’s how new musical genres emerge. Every nationalistic artist movement, for example, would go out into the countryside and look for folk culture and pull from it to elevate it to high culture. These days, it is slightly different because the whole high and low has collapsed. The internet flattens everything. You have 4Chan-style shitposts existing alongside a Renaissance masterpiece without hierarchy.’

In this tension between meta-narratives and lore lies Rafman’s freedom. It is very evident in the Egregore series, three 4k video suites in which images found on the internet are triptychally animated, juxtaposing elements as diverse as a wall clock filled with canned beans and the Garden of Bomarzo. Once again, the vastness of Rafman’s archive of found content echoes the breadth of his references, revealing an artist with many things to say and burning to expand his already immense world-building process. Rafman’s restlessness in giving birth to new works is somehow reminiscent of the overwhelming amount of content daily stratifying on the internet.

Questioned whether the choice of using a 16:9 screen ratio (the same of the ever so popular Instagram stories and Tik Tok videos) for the series was an attempt to evolve and update his register to the sharing and consumption of content, Rafman replies that, instead, the aim was that of taking a detour from what we associate with movies. ‘My idea was to treat them [the screens] like paintings, whereas when you see a 9:16 monitor you think of it like a film. I constantly have to deal with how to portray popular culture in my work. If you want to depict the present honestly, you have to confront the banality of living life in front of a screen. How do you depict a world dominated by screens, from computers to smartphones? How do you show screens within the screen-space of a film and keep it exciting and engaging? How do you make moving, cinematic work if so much of life takes place inside the impoverished space of the screen world? An exciting challenge as an artist is how to make screens interesting.’

Making Rafman’s art even more fascinating is the fact it unfolds over a highly conflictual field, which is that of the Internet and social media. On one hand it has been used — like in the case of 4Chan — as a countercultural tool to go against the status quo, on the other, the censoring policies of Meta have sanitised the medium, to borrow a Foucault expression. In the eyes of the Canadian, the problems lie in the platforms themselves which become a tool to observe and automatise modern subjectivity.

‘The internet is not new in these respects, but it exacerbates and reflects all humanity’s worst and best traits. Humans have been ostracising and dividing each other in power struggles for a long time. This condition is being made very transparent on the internet.

‘The only new system I have seen emerging is the Web3 crypto, which is still very tenuous. We still need to figure out how much influence and power it will have on culture in the long term. I’m curious, though.’

The use of elements coming from the culture of the deep web, of shitposting and trolling has nonetheless, over the years, put a stigma over artists like Rafman. This especially happened during the rise of Trumpism, which social media 4Chan and its most notoriously associated meme Pepe The Frog allegedly contributed to.

‘It is very clear there was a desert period during the Trump era,’ bitterly affirms Rafman, ‘the conversation within the art world shifted, focusing more on identity and portraiture, and now that trend has been exhausted.’

‘Just because something is problematic and a challenging subject matter, it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be investigated and taken seriously, especially if its effects on culture are so profound and create the language of the Internet. Throughout history, artists have explored dark aspects of humanity, but that doesn’t mean they promote them. Instead, they are trying to be truthful and represent the human condition. Some much great art could have never been made if artists weren’t allowed to confront the horrors of existence.’

The curatorial status quo, though, seems to have now shifted. What used to be defined as Post-Internet has at last acquired a dignity that it was long stripped of. Rafman is radiant when commenting on the increasing amount of shows his colleagues are having.

Born in 2009, the movement never truly had a coherent ideology one could associate its artists with, nor a manifesto, although it is explicit the mutual sharing of certain themes and stylistic traits which are both a consequence of and limited by the Internet. Labels can be equally problematic and useful, as they nonetheless offer a source of reflection and a springboard to eventually combat them. Certainly, Rafman’s oeuvre captures the zeitgeist, both in its form and content. After all, its disorientating and thought-provoking element isn’t mere mannerism, but only a consequence of the brutal, conflicting and socially crumbling times we’re experiencing.

Today’s cancel culture does indeed strike another resemblance with the Middle Ages: the practice of pillorying people to expiate and punish their moral sins. This partially happened to Rafman and the other Post-Internet artists. Will we, at last accept, their social commentary, whether critically savage or disenchanted, or will their art continue to trigger us? That, perhaps, is the question we’re still left with.

Works

Counterfeit Poast, 2022 (video still) 4K stereo video
28:20
© Jon Rafman
Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers
Counterfeit Poast, 2022 (video still) 4K stereo video
28:20
© Jon Rafman
Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers
Counterfeit Poast, 2022 (video still) 4K stereo video
28:20
© Jon Rafman
Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers
Counterfeit Poast, 2022 (video still) 4K stereo video
28:20
© Jon Rafman
Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers
Counterfeit Poast, 2022 (video still) 4K stereo video
28:20
© Jon Rafman
Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers
𐤒𐤓𐤀𐤁𐤟𐤀𐤍𐤂‘𐤋𐤟𐤚
(Club Angel II), 2022
Inkjet print and acrylic on canvas
186.7 × 134.6 cm
73.5 × 53 inches
© Jon Rafman
Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
𐤒𐤓𐤀𐤁𐤟𐤀𐤍𐤂‘𐤋𐤟𐤚
(Club Angel II), 2022
Inkjet print and acrylic on canvas
186.7 × 134.6 cm
73.5 × 53 inches
© Jon Rafman
Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Punctured Sky, 2021 (video still) 4K video, sound
21 min © Jon Rafman
Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers

Ziyu Wang

Posted on 13 de April de 2023 by nr

NR 17 Global Virtue · Spring Summer 2023
Published · Print Page 374

Credits

Photographs · Courtesy of Ziyu Wang

Gabriele Galimberti

Posted on 13 de April de 2023 by nr

NR 17 Global Virtue · Spring Summer 2023
Published · Print Page 174

Feature · Gabriele Galimberti
Words · Billy De Luca

Recording society and its patterns, arrangements and faces is Galimberti

Homes are provisional. Society lives within borders and over bones. Recording society and its patterns, arrangements and faces is Galimberti. The Italian-born Gabriele Galimberti is an internationally renowned photographer and visual storyteller. With a committed gaze, he observes and recounts scenes of being with a practice that is as creative as it is concrete. Entering his subject’s private world, he captures images of people at their jobs and in their homes, with their belongings, families or certain possessions to research and align intra-human patterns across the world. Exhibiting on a global scale, Galimberti works across commercial fields, collaborates with National Geographic and maintains a steady production of his stories.

His lens is nearly within touching distance of subjects, and the product is an analogue of involved intimacy and exposed vulnerabilities. His techniques render a symbolic, slightly unsettling representation of subjects as being behind one-way glass in another room. His approachable character and honest intentions allow him to engage with his subjects and become a part of their lives in the intimacy of their homes. Galimberti’s work offers perspectives in a clear-cut, highly-descriptive form. Everything he captures is sharply focused, developing an image over time.

One might say, therefore, that Carter has rapidly evolved into the photographic equivalent of a visual statistician. Indeed, Galimberti’s projects emphasise a fine-tuned address of social, economic and cultural contexts without departing from the documentary tradition of photography. He sits down with NR to discuss his practice, thoughts and intentions for his ongoing work.

The image of America has many iterations. Emanuel Leutze’s Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way (1860) and John Ghast’s image of the land as a holy ground in American Progress (1872) had a sharp promise of infinite beauty and pushed the land into one which was a spiritual resource. Then, in the 19th Century, Matthew Brady brought photography to the table with his documentation of the Civil War. Suddenly the land of the free appeared spoiled, the sunset decolourised, and soldiers soiled. His images changed the image of the US and, as put by Robert Hughes, changed the idea of what war was, ‘like TV for Vietnam’. Similarly, Gabriele Galimberti shifts the focus of reality into a newer, more contemporary slide. His work echoes conceptions of place and person in relation to their purpose as human beings and the meaning assigned to the products that surround them. He highlights an exquisite variety of human life in the most intimate of locations: a home is a spiritual resource, possessions act as conduits for human expression, and Galimberti changes the idea of who we are.

You completed your project, The Ameriguns, three years ago, but you were just in the United States a few days ago. How did it feel to be back?

I was in Washington DC for National Geographic, which is based there. They were having their annual meeting, so I stayed for five days before going to Los Angeles for a few meetings. Work-wise, it’s a good city. I always find good connections there, especially since I’ve been working for NatGeo since 2016; in their building, you can meet a lot of really interesting people who go in and out, whether photographers or explorers. When I started being a photographer, I wanted to work for National Geographic, so when that happened a few years ago, it was incredible.

Do you travel there a lot?

I actually come to the states pretty often, and I’ve been back a couple of times since I took my last picture of the series (in January 2020). I’ve been going there for the past 20 years, and it’s the place I’ve been to the most outside of Italy — I’ve probably been there more than 40 times. On my first road trip to America, I went to Houston and drove to Austin, and on the drive, I probably saw 20 gun shops on the sides of the roads. That stuck in my mind. I would see McDonald’s, and then a gun shop, and then Mcdonald’s and a gun shop.

The late writer and critic A.A. Gill wrote in his book, To America with Love that ‘Guns in America’s story are a constant, a plot device, like coffee cups in European films. Guns are Hollywood’. Your work depicting Americans with their firearms sparked considerable conversation. How did that all start?

I was in Kansas for a National Geographic shoot four years ago. On one of my days off in the middle of November, I was driving outside of Kansas City and saw a huge gun shop in the middle of nowhere. For the first time ever, I walked in. I was curious to see what was inside, and when I entered, I realised they didn’t just sell handguns but war-level firearms. I started to speak with some of the customers, and one of the customers was at the counter. I asked, ‘Is this the first gun you are buying?’ to which he replied, ‘no, of course not, I have more than sixty’. It came to me to ask, ‘can I come to take a picture of you and your guns’. The first photo was completely natural, without the project of Ameriguns in mind. A few days later, it happened again in Dallas, and I decided to do some research and immediately found out the numbers.

Your images in this series conveyed these numbers more than just people and their guns. What numbers did they show?

In America, there are more privately-owned guns than people. There are 1.3 guns per person in America, but then you discover that only one-third of Americans own guns; that means there are five guns per person who owns a gun. Then, counting all the privately-owned guns in the world, 48% of them are in the USA, which constitutes 4% of the global population. It’s a lot, so I thought, I want to photograph these numbers.

You quite literally put the statistics and the facts on the floor. What were your intentions for the series?

I wanted to understand more, so that’s what I did. After mass shootings, there would be waves of popularity for my photos, going onto Twitter and on the media. Mass shootings are a huge problem in America, but it’s not, in my opinion, the biggest problem related to firearms. Analysing the 2018 statistics, there were nearly 40,000 gun-related deaths, and 77 people were due to mass shootings; the larger number of people (more than 100 people dying every day from gunshots) is almost normal. But, with mass shootings, especially in schools, the media talks about it.

Out of the 500 people I contacted, I ended up photographing around 50 people. I went pretty much everywhere in America and photographed in 32 states. There are many things I liked and photographed in the country, so it wasn’t the only project I made there, but one of the aspects of American society that triggered my curiosity was their relationship with guns.

This bare-bones bluntness to the concept has translated throughout many of your series, including your work with National Geographic. How does this line of work with National Geographic differ from your personal practice?

It’s really stimulating working for them. I’ve taken three assignments from National Geographic, and you work alongside the photo editor. You create a conversation with them, and when you reach an idea of how you want to create the story, then you go and shoot it. It’s one of the best work experiences I have had in my life. It is a magazine that cares a lot about photography and the quality of work they publish. The people there know what they do, and the whole team are great.

Many of your compositions have an intimacy that glazes over nostalgia and incarnates a realism in subject matter and context. When did you begin formulating your distinctive style?

The love I have for photographing people in their homes started in 2009-10. Over those two years, I was working for the Italian Magazine La Republica. I made a project, Couchsurfing, where I travelled for two years all over the world — over 50 countries, I think — and I used the Couchsurfing social network (a sort of Airbnb for free). I was hosted by people in 58 countries, reporting stories for the magazine from a person’s home, and every week had a new chapter in a different place. The story was about the host and their life for a week. I would take photos, maybe go to work with my host or visit the school with them and take photos.

You take photographs that are about something. They are more than what they are of and step outside the realm of literal relation into a heightened contextual language. How did your view as narrator come into the picture with Couchsurfing?

It was amazing because I got to do this work across Africa, Asia, Alaska and everywhere. That was the first time I pointed the camera towards normal people and normal lives. Beforehand, I was always looking to find special stories that were of interest and the media’s interest, but when I did Couchsurfing, I thought, wait for a second, this is interesting; it’s interesting watching normal people’s lives because you can learn a lot of things from them. I was super lucky to have the opportunity to do this project for two years in so many countries, meeting people from different religions, different cultures and different everything: each place gave me a different piece of something. I was so curious to see how these people lived, and I wouldn’t take my camera with me all the time; there were days I wouldn’t bring it with me because I was just living with these people. I never take pictures of somebody without knowing them, I need to understand something about them to photograph them.

Does this stripping down to the essentials create a narrative? What makes you most engaged with your work?

What I really love to do is photograph people where they live. I like to enter people’s houses and take photos of that person where they live in their environment, and that’s the common line in all my projects. But I also like to work in advertising and creating sets from zero. Sometimes, I’ve shot a few campaigns for clients where we created scenes out of nothing. In that case, it’s more of a collaboration where I am there as the photographer, and then there are set designers who fill the scene. With people in their homes, every time I do a project, I tell my subjects that they have to be patient. I’m not going there to take a snapshot, I’m coming to take one or two days of your life. It’s always a collaboration between me and the subject.

Do you believe that your work is emotional? Is the human reaction simply an outcome of images created to solely inform?

Yes, I think some of my stories are emotional. Everybody can have an emotional reaction to every story, so it depends upon the person. When I present my work, I always see people getting close to my work, and they do react. I’m happy to see people being emotional about what I do and what they say. Whether they are reading my books or at my presentations, it’s nice to feel that what you do has a sense of meaning. It means you are going in a good direction.

What project makes you most emotional?

My grandmother’s book, In Her Kitchen: Stories and Recipes from Grandmas Around the World. I grew up with my grandmother, and there are lots of memories related to that book. The reason I made the book was that, while I was travelling for my Couchsurfing project, my grandmother was extremely worried about the food I was eating. That was her only concern, and so I said, don’t worry, ‘I am going to have dinner with other grandmothers because they know how to feed me for sure’. So, I started taking these photos of recipes and of the grandmothers every week, and I was sending these photos to my mother and my grandmother. My grandmother would relax. And at the end, I looked over all these images and recipes and thought I could make a book out of them, so I did it. I think it’s my greatest success because they printed 25,000 copies of the book in English, and it sold out, and then we had 14 different editions in different languages. It’s weird because the book is a cookbook and not a photography book, and there are photos in it, but if you look for it in a shop, it is in the cooking section. I made it because it was a homage to my grandmother. I remember going back home to her and telling her about my trips and the food that I tried, and sometimes I would cook some of the recipes for her to try.

Honing into your series Home Pharma, what was the impetus to capture the relationship between person and pill? Is this a very personal relationship?

It’s personal because when you show the medicines you use or have in your house, you have them because you have certain needs or fears. It really opens the door to intimacy. That was a project I worked on for National Geographic when they were preparing an issue about Health. I proposed the idea of going to 20 countries and looking at what medicine people had in their homes. It was easier to ask people to show me their medicines rather than guns, but when you show such a thing, you say a lot about yourself and where you live. Certain countries had people that tended to rely on medicine a lot, but other countries had less trust in them. The places where I found strong relationships between medicine and people were France, Switzerland and the United States. It doesn’t happen as much in Africa or the Caribbean.

Is it hard to find a balance between the intimate subjects (and their possessions) with their presentation?

It was interesting to see that while I was shooting, people would lose their shyness and end up bringing out more and more of what they had in their medicine cabinets. It was a step-by-step process as people can be protective and not want to show you everything. It is an interesting way to measure shyness and fear.

Your images are uncondescending and honest. Does their formal composition shift often? Do you still experiment?

There’s a certain type of photography that I am very confident in, but I’ve worked on a few things that are outside of that. I worked on a project with National Geographic on the concept of ‘Genius’ and what it means to be a genius. The story was split into three chapters, divided by Albert Einstein, Picasso and Leonardo Da Vinci. How do you make stories of these people? You can’t take photos of them, so together with my photo editor and another photographer, we worked as a team to create a narrative with these three characters. It was really challenging, but I find challenges really fun.

The photographs, as compositional and separate entities from their subjects, convey respect for the scene. The light and angles in your style express a vantage point that leaves room for clear sight and observation. For instance, the eye level of your subjects transfers between adults and children. Do you spend a large amount of time preparing for an image?

I don’t take many photos. For a project like Couchsurfing, once I had the right picture, I could leave my camera at home and not take it out with me. Once I am satisfied with the portrait, the focus is on the story. I take photos of what I want and need for the story. When I find out what the image will be, I go looking for it, and when it’s found, I’m happy. With Ameriguns, I needed six or seven hours to create the scene; every single gun has to be in the right place, I needed to sort out the lighting, and then maybe I take 50 photos but build up the picture.

How do people feel when they are placed on the scene?

It’s a bit of a surprise for them. Most of the time, they are having fun. Something weird and unusual is happening, and they feel like they are a part of it. Most of the time, people think that when you ask, ‘can I take a picture of you’ it will be a quick snap, but when they have to do it with me, it’s a completely different thing. Some people don’t care if it takes five hours because they are having fun, and they like to be included in the process; for example, while we are setting up the picture, we could be having a conversation. In the process of creating photos, many things are happening and it’s a process with people together.

You have been in more homes than, well, most people. And you are quite well travelled. Is immersing into lives and places fundamental for your current practice? How does it feel to be allowed to probe and surround yourself with varying lives?

I’ve noticed that photography now is a language that connects people from everywhere. Everybody speaks that language, and you can look at an Instagram of somebody in China, not speak Chinese but understand something about that person. When I am with my subjects, and they see the lighting and process, they are curious because they also take photos every day, but they find it interesting how a professional does it. I like to interact with people in this way because I need to keep them happy to be there, especially if the shoot takes five hours.

Do you use assistants for your projects?

90% of the time, I’m by myself. I usually have a lot of equipment with me. When I shot Ameriguns, I had an assistant with me for 50% of the project, and he came with me for 20 days. We shared ideas sometimes on scenes and compositions, and I liked having somebody that was a part of my life already. In that case, it was because the scenes were very big. It wasn’t like Home Pharma, where everything was on the table, and I could do everything by myself.

Does this change with commercial jobs?

With commercial jobs, I always have one or two assistants, and on most of these jobs, there are quite a few people on set. It’s fun, but when you work on a set like that, 90% of the people are people you only just met. Even if I’m good at communicating with people, sometimes it’s not the same for others, and sometimes I have to work with people I don’t know for a few days, which is not as natural for me. But it’s part of the job.

Do the impact of your photographs tend to raise a level of controversy? The Balenciaga scandal looks to have been clarified, and you are now finally absolved from culpability. How does that feel?

It’s a sad story. It was the first time I made a campaign for a fashion brand, and it went so poorly. I was accused of being a paedophile for over two weeks everywhere in the world. They didn’t do anything to protect me, but now a few things are happening; I’m working with some of the media and talking to Balenciaga. I was trapped in something that was not my fault: I was there as a photographer. What they did with the second campaign (with the Supreme Court documents and books) was pretty weird, but a lot of people think I was the mind behind that too. I was not even there. For the first shoot, I was there for two days to take six photos of kids and objects; two of these objects were teddy bear bags. I don’t work in fashion, so when they gave me these bags, I thought they were ugly, ugly like punks. I didn’t see anything weird, but what happened later was incredible: I received over 5000 death threats and people calling me in the middle of the night. I was getting covered by shit, and nobody said a word about it. Now, it’s flipping over and is going in the other direction. I got a lot of positive attention from the major media, with interviews about it and people approaching me about documentaries discussing what happened. But it’s flipping to the other side.

When it comes to the media and the public, it is quite interesting how even the credits on a shoot can scale a misleading representation of what a photographer’s role is.

The problem was that they wanted my style of photo for the campaign. Children and toys and children with objects are something I have been shooting for 15 years, so it’s something that is clearly me. So with that vision, it is a lot more ‘me’ than Balenciaga in the eyes of the public. So, when the scandal came out, I think people needed to find somebody to blame, and since these photos are so close to what I have been doing for 15 years, they thought it was my mind behind the bags. When people had these reactions, Balenciaga erased everything from Instagram and the website and then published another campaign made together with Adidas, which was even worse because it felt like it somehow confirmed that there was a message behind these campaigns. It was unfortunate because everybody thought it was me behind the documents and both campaigns, even if I didn’t decide on a single detail about that campaign and was only at the first shoot.

How does a commercial shoot run? Did the Balenciaga set involve you being the only one controlling the image?

I was there with 25 other people around me, including the parents of the kids. Everybody was having fun and was there. I thought, OK, I trust these people, so I’ll take the picture. I didn’t see anything weird going on, and I can’t decide to take a photo of something just because I think it was ugly. I was already in Paris, and I already signed the contract. They said, ‘I want you to make the same style of photo for us but with kids and our collection’, so I said yes, because I knew they had bags and sunglasses and it was a commercial. So the first time I saw the collection was after I signed the contract and went to Paris. I had never seen it before, so I was there and saw these punky bags and everything else and the 25 people around me, and if they say the set is OK, then I trust these people and take the picture. I didn’t see anything weird. When something like that is put in front of you, you think, ew, this is ugly. But that’s it. It just looks like a little monster. My nephew is seven or eight years old and plays with monsters, and they are super ugly, but if I put that monster together with Balenciaga’s bags, they would look alike.

How do you feel about the idea of cancel culture and people being influenced by mass media?

The media played a big role because many major media sources created stories that were a lot bigger than what it was, and they triggered an atomic bomb. Balenciaga made a huge mistake, especially with how they handled the whole thing. It was weird because they sued a company, then the set designer, and then admitted it was wrong, and they wouldn’t be suing anyone. Even the communication with the scandal was weird, they stopped communicating with me during these days, and I was trying to reach them as I was getting death threats and wanted them to do something. Anyway, it was a sad story, but it’s luckily over at the moment.

Works

Kitija Shiroma, 29 years old – Honolulu, Hawaii. Kitija Shiroma, Mae to her friends, owns the biggest firing range in the Hawaiian Islands. She owns it with her stepfather, a former military man whom she thinks of as her dad. It was he who instilled in her a passion for firearms. She was 10 at the time and had just moved to Honolulu from her birthplace, Thailand. “I used to watch Hollywood movies. Like any kid, I wanted to learn more about what I saw, so my father would take me hunting with him, up in the mountains. People hunt a lot around here. There are deer and pigs—it’s a rich land. That’s when I started shooting.”
Noel Hawthorne, 5 years old – South Dallas, Texas. Noel is 100% Texan! His ideas are already very clear, he wants to be a pilot! Play only with airplanes, of all sizes and sometimes with the playstation but only with a flight simulator. His favorite game is to put the little men in lego with the big boing that his father gave him and then make them slide to the bottom of the garden where there is a small pond. He imagines taking the legos on vacation to the lake, then after giving them a bath he puts them back in the plane and takes them home.
Taha, 4 years old – Palestinian Fields, Beirut – Lebanon. Thaha is Palestinian but was born in Beirut, Lebanon where both he and his family have almost no rights. They live in a kind of shantytown with a thousand other people and they all come from Palestine. In order to have water and electricity, the people who live there are forced to illegally connect to the systems that pass nearby, because even these rights are denied to them. Taha doesn’t have many games and when I asked him what his favorite was, he had no doubts and replied: the racing car.
Allenah Lajallab, 4 years old – El Nido – Palawan Island, Philippines. She was born and raised in El Nido, a small town north of the island of Palawan in the Philippines. There are no hospitals in El Nido and she was born at home. Her games are just puppets, her favorite is the orange rabbit, but only because she loves color, while what she doesn’t like is the white bear because it gets dirty too easily.
Floyd and Lesia McMillin, both 49 years old – Topeka, Kansas. Floyd and Lesia McMillin’s enormous home is a showcase of hunting trophies. Stuffed deer, squirrels, ducks and geese, eyes frozen in time, stare as visitors pass through each room. There are quite a few—more than one per room, so at least 20. The sole exception is the bedroom, hung with portraits but otherwise strangely bare. It is here, however, that we find the guns that were used to hunt the animals. Most aren’t loaded, the couple say. Only one or two are ready to be fired at a moment’s notice, “in the defense of the family.” Their collection consists of 65 pieces, and there’s always something new. Each month, the McMillins spend roughly $2,500 on ammunition, accessories and new additions. Their passion for guns has been in their blood since childhood. Both come from families of hunters, people who would spend every moment of leisure time escaping into the great outdoors in search of prey. Floyd first shot a gun with his father, when he was 6 years old. At age 12, he was already spending much of his time pursuing game. At 17, he began participating in shooting contests. Lesia, on the other hand, had never fired a weapon until she was 46, when her husband bought her a Sig Sauer 380 and taught her to use it at the firing range. Until then, while on hunting trips firstly with her father and then her husband, she had only ever given tips and instructions. The McMillins own a very busy gun shop. “65% of our new customers are women who’ve never shot a gun before. Many have gone through something that’s made them want to learn how to defend themselves. Most of them say that, between the time they called the police and the time the officers got there, the worst had already happened. A gun gives them more power, more security.”
Latoya Piper, 32 years old – Huntsville, Alabama. Not many people can say they stopped a mass shooting, but Latoya Piper is one of them. It was the night of December 31, 2018, and she was working as a security guard at the entrance to a club. Two men began to argue, then one of them went back to his car, took out an AK-47 and tried to go into the club, shooting. Latoya responded swiftly. She fired once and he shot back. Then she fired again and was able to stop him. The man did not die. It was Latoya herself who called the first responders who took him to the hospital. That episode only strengthened her convictions about the importance of carrying a gun. “I encourage victims of violent crimes to learn to use guns, to buy them and practice with them. It only takes one bullet to stop a mass shooting,” she says with confidence. Latoya’s familiarity with firearms runs deep. She practically grew up in the sheriff’s office where her father worked. She was 11 when he taught her how to shoot. At just over 20 she was in Iraq, serving in the military. Today, as a veteran, she believes there should be no distinction between ordinary citizens and members of the armed forces. “There’s no sort of firearm that people should be banned from buying. Anything the military has, individuals should be able to have, too.” I like military-style weapons because they are more powerful. You’re the one who controls the explosion in your hands, the one who directs it. It’s having the ability to control something that powerful with my own two hands. If, tomorrow, the government decided that some of my guns were illegal, I don’t think I’d turn them in. I think I’d ask them to come and get them, and I doubt that they would. If I don’t have a gun with me, I feel naked.
Dimitri Procofieff, 22 years old – Geneva, Switzerland. To reach Dimitri’s family’s home, a sort of sanctuary for the ecologically-aware wayfarer perched high in the mountains above Geneva, travelers must first traverse over 6 miles of dense forest. It is a very large house, constructed almost entirely of wood and set on the shore of a small lake with a clear view of Mont Blanc. There are no neighbors, no connection with the rest of the world. Everything is zero-environmental-impact, recycled and sustainable. Their energy is produced by wind turbines and solar panels, rainwater is collected and circulated into the house and heat is generated using wood from the nearby forest (but only from trees that are ready to be cut, of course). It’s thanks to that wood that I ended up couchsurfing with Dimitri and his family. Every year they organize a get together, three days when friends, acquaintances and couchsurfers recruited from far and near help cut all the wood needed to heat the house through the winter. Think of it as a sort of jamboree, where you work during the day and at night you party with people from just about everywhere. Dimitri’s also a photographer and, because our paths had crossed once before, I knew about his family’s summer tradition. So it was that I decided to go and claim one of the numerous mattresses he puts out for visiting couchsurfers. Their home may be simple, but it’s very big and Dimitri, his mother and her partner open their door to whoever passes through. Dimitri’s incredible hospitality may be, in part at least, a consequence of his own nomadic history. Born in France in 1989 to a family of Russian origin, he spent his first 15 years moving from one place to another: Paris, Moscow, Tbilisi, Sri Lanka and Belgrade Ð the place where finally, at the age of fifteen, he started to feel at home. He doesn’t have many memories of his early years, apart from the fact that, for some strange reason, his family’s kitchens always seemed to catch fire. When his parents went to live in Senegal, he headed to Geneva, which is where he lives today, surrounded by friends and couchsurfers. As he tells me, “The thing I’m most proud of is having maintained real relationships with friends whom, unfortunately, I only rarely see.”
Eric Arnsberger, 30 years old and Morgan Gagnier. 22 years old – Lake Forest, California. During his eight years in the Army, Eric Arnsberger was deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo, Russia, Vietnam and several different countries in Africa. He’s been a policeman in New Orleans, one of America’s most violent cities, and he grew up in Florida, where gangs were rife and very mean. “When I was a kid, I experienced all kinds of violence. I was stabbed, beaten up, robbed. Then I went to war. I saw what happens when someone else points a gun at you. I had to shoot at people and they shot at me, hundreds of times.” Now, back in the civilian world, Eric teaches people how to handle guns and shoot them safely. He lives in California, and he knows very well that many of his neighbors disapprove of his lifestyle and of what he does. “When I go off to work dressed in a certain way, I can see that people are judging me.” Morgan, the woman with him in the portrait, is not one of them. She’s a trainer in a gym, and she fell in love with him through following him on Instagram. Eric never goes out unarmed and has a predilection for military-type firearms. “I’ve never bought a complete gun. I always buy the parts, then make myself a custom piece. I learned how to build guns in the Army. One of my jobs was to test and assess firearms, and that’s how I fell in love with them. If some new law made my guns illegal tomorrow, I think I’d break them down, hide them and go off somewhere else.” First weapon: .22-caliber rifle.
Boonlom Thongpor, 69 years old – Bangkok, Thailand. Six big photos with all the members of her family keep Boonlom company every time she prepares a new delicacy among the cookers of her kitchen. A 69-year-old mother of two daughters and grandmother of the young Mai (in the photo between the hi-fi speakers), all her life spent in Bangkok, Boonlom considers herself the best cook of her neighbourhood. Until a few years ago she used to run a small street restaurant, the typical kind you find everywhere around the South-East of Asia, where people eat simple and quick (but often very tasty) dishes, standing or sitting on stalls on the street borders. At present her restaurant is run by one of her daughters, who has changed it slightly: in what functioned as their old garage, her daughter has arranged four squared tables and people can finally eat properly, sitting at them! The average cost of a full meal at her restaurant rarely goes beyond two euros!
Wholl-Lima Balthazan, 56 years old, her mother Silemoieux Charikable, 76 years old, and her son Lozma Astrel, 20 years old, in their house, Port au Prince, Haiti. Wholl-Lima works as a secretary for a Haitian cultural organization called Fokal. She uses traditional Haitian medicine to cure herself and her loved ones. It is mainly leafs that can be found in local markets or provided by a ÒMedsen FeyÓ, a leaf doctor.
Julia Enaigua, 71 years old Ð La Paz, Bolivia. Julia was born more than 70 years ago in a little village on the shores of the Titicaca Lake. In her family everybody was, and is still now, a fisherman or a farmer. Indeed, she grew up first playing and then working in the fields, too. When she was 25 she got married and moved to La Paz, the city where her husband came from. Since that moment her job has changed: from a farmer into a seller of vegetables. She has got a small stall in one of the many markets in the city. Every day she wakes up very early, takes a bus to go to the countryside outside the city, buys huge bags of vegetables from the local farmers, goes back to the city by bus and, after arranging her stall for the day, she is at the market until she sells almost all the vegetables. Unfortunately, nobody is waiting for her home now, her husband died a few years ago and her children live in another house. However, itÕs a pleasure that every weekend they both gather at her house and she can cook for them and her 5 grandchildren.
Jean Toussaint, 28 years old, is a policeman in the National Police Force of Haiti. He has built the house where he’s photographed in the suburbs of the city of Jacmel, Haiti. Like many Haitians he does not own many medicines and usually buys the single pills from street vendors if he needs them. He has here some cough syrup and some Paracetamol.

Female Pentimento

Posted on 13 de April de 2023 by nr

NR 17 Global Virtue · Spring Summer 2023
Published · 212

Feature · female pentimento
Words ·

Female Pentimento conjures mystic portals that lead to personal wonder

Female Pentimento summons liminal portals to apocalyptic ecstasy, fairytale daydreams and irreversible escapism. They blast saturated white beams more powerful than a spotlight; more sacred than a burst of sunlight at the end of the rain. They draw from human experiences, seemingly projecting the artist’s personal encounters at times, and lend support to viewers by digitally opening new doors for their worries and fantasies. Female Pentimento’s nurturing principles have harvested a tight-knit community whose eyes for art are satiated, ears for wise words quenched, and minds for optimism fed.

The New York-based visual artist positions herself as virtual holy water solidified by her purpose in this lifetime to impart beauty and hope through words, images and music. She finds her self-design in bringing positivity into the double-tap realm to be a constant spring of inspiration for her followers to lap up. Her unearthly visuals reap the seduction for optimism. Her floating palm-sized butterflies pocket luck that guides people out of their limbo thoughts and toward a deep sense of calm. Her multi-winged phoenix brings the prophecy that whoever holds their gazes at its orb of light shall be gifted with prosperity, in a way that it has never entered their lives before.

Every image she creates even comes with a short caption that offers itself as a mantra for manifestation. I protect my inner landscape from all harm, forever. I no longer scare myself with my own thoughts. The most miraculous things happen to me, and I am in awe of all the incredible experiences that enter my life.And when the sinews of my thoughts tear, the miracle I need comes gently into view.

For NR, she lets our readers in on her light-filled purpose and life that ranges from art to music.

What were your earliest memories of art?

I think on some level I’ve always wanted to do something with the arts. As a child, I was mesmerised by the piano, and later down the line, painting. I didn’t truthfully grow up with a ton of art influence around me though, outside some of the obvious avenues, like cartoons and anime.

My earliest memory of encountering fine art is when I was in 6th grade and my mom brought home prints of Ansel Adam’s work. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but that was likely the gateway to me dialoguing with artwork in a more critical and meaningful way.

How did you come up with the moniker ‘Female Pentimento’?

For me, the power of having a stage name is that it gives me permission to explore a new heart dimension without being constrained to what I already think I know about myself. My ultimate intention is for the name to touch on this idea of revealing hidden aspects of oneself, just as a pentimento in art refers to the reappearance of earlier layers of paint.

In this context, the female’ aspect of the name emphasises the idea of a feminine presence, revealing parts of the self that were previously hidden. I hope to others ‘female pentimento’ suggests a sense of uncovering and reemergence with a focus on the experiences and perspectives of a feminine energy.

As for the history behind it, I was brainstorming ideas of what I wanted my moniker to be and I kept returning to Picasso’s ‘The Old Guitarist’. In the work we know today, we see the iconic, downtrodden figure of a man in anguish — however, underneath the image is an original underpainting of an unnamed woman breastfeeding a child in a much more lush, idyllic scene.

“I always thought that relationship made for an interesting metaphor around my own gender identity and mental environment.”

Tell me about your journey to light becoming your source of visual inspiration.

Over time, light has just become an instinctive element I’ve been drawn to. Since I started focusing on photography, I’ve been interested in all sorts of different natural phenomena including sunlight, lightning and rainbows.

I love how symbolically loaded these elements are throughout cultures and art history. I find light (and nature) a universally understood language that doesn’t have all the conceptual red tape that other subject matters have. One could look at a photograph of a wildfire stretched across a landscape, teeming with wildlife, and know instinctively how to feel about it.

Many, many creatives have influenced my present work, and the lots of visionary artists that come immediately to mind are Agnes Pelton, Hilma af Klint, Belkis Ayon — the list goes on and on.

How was your environment growing up?

Growing up, my environment was a bit chaotic. I was raised in a single-parent household in a small southern town in Virginia. We moved around a decent amount as my mother was a minister, and the church relocated us regionally every couple of years.

I imagine anywhere I grew up would have been a challenge for me. When I was young, I was a very sensitive and shy child. I used to see those attributes as more of a liability, but as I get older I revere the tender and reserved parts of me the most.

Do you see your works as touching upon religion, faith, or both?

I think the first part of the question is for the viewer to decide. What I can tell you though is that when I’m creating, I borrow a great deal of inspiration from different religions and spiritual practices like, but not limited to, interconnectedness, spreading kindness and advocating for mindfulness.

As for my personal practice, I’ve been describing myself recently as a biospiritualist, which is an ideology that posits that the biological is inherently intertwined with the metaphysical.

How does nature empower you as an artist?

It’s the catalyst, the subject, and the artist in my mind. I don’t think I’ve created any recent work that doesn’t bow deeply to the natural world.

“I see our earth as the ultimate wellspring of inspiration.”

What’s your inspiration for making portals that seem to be passages to unearthly worlds?

Portals are probably one of the most magical elements I experiment with in my images. Sometimes, they border on the fantastical (or unbelievable) end of the spectrum, but I think living in a para-reality is often the job of an artist. That is, thinking beyond what you know to exist and imagining a world of what could be. I like the idea of living in that space of potentiality full-time; it keeps me curious.

Do these portals symbolise a form of escape from reality?

Certainly. In some instances, portals convey the idea of transitioning from one realm to another, offering a way out of the physical world. In others, I find it fascinating to reimagine myself as the light source or portal, and to consider what it would be like to exist in a non-corporeal form.

How do you come up with the often inspirational and reflective captions behind your visual works?

The captions I attach to my images often stem from phrases and ideas that I feel compelled to remind myself of. They are often direct affirmations that I use to uplift and empower myself. Through these words, I hope to offer others a similar source of comfort, hope, and inspiration.

I’d also add that I’ve been deeply influenced by authors such as Jack Kornfield, Louise Hay, and Marianne Williamson to name a few, who have shaped my understanding of the power of affirmations and positive thinking. They have inspired me to craft mantras that not only accompany my visuals but also uplift and empower those who encounter them.

Do you see yourself as a guardian of light, both visually and linguistically?

Over the last few years, I’ve felt strongly that my calling in this lifetime is to impart beauty and hope to the world.

I trust in my ability to live up to that goal. I know I can do it.

“Whether through words, images, or music, I think my greatest purpose may be to bring positivity into the lives of others and be a source of ongoing inspiration.”

Credits

Artworks · Courtesy of female pentimento

Yein Lee

Posted on 13 de April de 2023 by nr

NR 17 Global Virtue ·Spring Summer 2023
Published · Print Page 010

Feature · Yein Lee
Interview · Billy De Luca

Lee’s biomechanical forms

After completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Seoul, South Korean-born artist Yein Lee went to the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, Austria. She stayed there to live, refining her technical prowess into an intensely profound body of work. And she is far from done.

Combining her past experience, dexterous innovations and interest in advancing technology, Lee has exhibited her work in numerous locations, showing her work ten times just in the last year. Her sculptures have approached the world with the strength of a cyborg. Their creator has constantly developed alongside them, her mind evolving with the same creative mental software that transforms these objects into personable, breathing beings.

Her work has an unrelenting originality. The sculptures are crafted into augmented forces. Lee approaches the overall composition with creativity in mind; she creates the presented proportions, and her treatment of the fabricated flesh can be felt through panels and poles. Lee installs biomechanical forms that brush against the fabric of a wall. The dark, drooping and dagger-sharp bodies poke out of the white walls of a gallery. Xylophoned rib cages jerk out with splayed bones, like arachnid arms reaching around a polymer and epoxy heart. Loose limbs fall like sinuous vines bleeding black and stretching into nothingness like the electrical wires that they are. These forms are obscure and anything but human. However, they hint at a humanity that can be found within ourselves, only with multiple jabbering mouths sealed in polymer paralysis. If humans are contorted in hate and loosened by drink, Lee’s hand-made creatures are intensified with the cold glitter of a PVC plexiglass and wires that twist like wilted willows.

These are not merely artworks in stasis. They transform over time and have a life of their own. Lee transfers the essence of being into objects with an actuality and reality at their core, giving the pulsations of a creature with a soul.

You originally studied traditional painting in Seoul and then moved to Vienna. Since finishing up at The Academy of Fine Art, you have continued to live there. It has been almost a decade since you graduated from University in Seoul. Why did you stay?

I had no idea about the city at all. Soon, I decided there was a young, active scene going on, and there were many spaces for artists to produce, especially considering the smaller scale of the city. Many artists were around the city, and everyone was working around me, and I enjoyed this input and movement. Now I really have a sense of community here.

Did this sense of belonging come immediately or over time?

My friends are here, my partner is here and my studio is here. I now know how to source my materials, and I know how it works here when it comes to running my studio. This usually takes some time. You have to get used to a German-speaking country and then deal with the art bubble (which is all in English).

Your material practice has branched out from the norm and has spread into the realms of technological components, metals and alloys, and plastics and organic materials. At what point did you move towards sculpture?

Through my BA in Seoul, I focused on Asian painting, and then for my Masters, I followed a more modern path with Contemporary Art Direction. I went to Berlin and then went to Vienna for the Academy of Fine Arts, where I continued in the painting class. I struggled a bit as I couldn’t find my own visual language through paint. At the time, the whole Zombie Figuration discourse was going on (in the mid-2010s), and there was an overwhelming overload of paintings.

So, what did you do?

I tried to forget everything I had built so far, and I decided to leave Vienna and go to Shanghai for an Artist Residency Program. But I didn’t bring any material with me, on purpose. In the program, there was a lot of leftover material from the previous residents, so I just collected it all and began using these random materials that artists had left behind. Leaving my old studio behind and starting with new tools was really helpful. I started using hot-glue guns, plastics, acrylic colours and polyurethane. I started working with these new materials, and after that, my painting became more sculptural. When I returned to Vienna, I kept experimenting with different materials and processes, and learning casting and welding helped me get closer to what I was looking for.

The scale of your artwork varies, yet the forms depicted remain relatable. One can see a drill-motor heart and limbs of steel, a chest with spread combs like fork prongs and body positions that feel so human. When you returned to Vienna, how did you start collecting the materials for your sculptures? Are there human elements you search for which operate as surrogate body parts for the forms?

I like that it feels human. In 2018, I really started getting into sculpture. I turned to casting and melding metals out of curiosity, but soon I fell in love with it. After using these plastics and metals for painting, I began making the frames for the works, which later became structures in themselves. As I explored these forms of matter, I knew I needed an anchor to communicate with the viewer, as my visual language of monstrosity tends to be less communicative and more framed. Using the human form was a translator. There has always been a presence of organic matter in my work. Even before I went to Shanghai, I had always used bodily elements; when I returned, I deepened my research on organic structures and was influenced by pop culture and movies. This all helped push out my creativity, and body machine parts started working as surrogates, but sometimes they just expanded on body parts.

Technical skill is a quality by which sculpture is evaluated. Does your practice involve meticulous working and reworking until you are happy with the result?

Every time I work, there are millions of possible next steps to creating the sculpture. For example, how much should I bend this piece of metal? But I like that. It is nice to explore these possibilities and refine the options for finality.

“Finding what’s ‘right’ is a thrilling feeling.”

And how do you know when to stop?

I could pretend to be a genius and say, ‘I just know’, but there are rules to follow for basic forms; I have an individual formula, focusing on the completeness, content, consistency of form and ratio of texture to balance in the composition. When everything fits into what I want to talk about, I know it’s done. I’ve definitely grasped more of an understanding of finality, which came over time and through more experience with my materials. The experience gives me more choices in what I can do. The experience makes it easier to see what is possible.

“The point of arrival for artwork is the ability for the piece to be presented.”

However, for many artists with a strong technical focus, the mastery of a process can be overlooked for a purely aesthetic interpretation; it can become cold. Despite this, your pieces have a lucidity, a sense of being which can speak.

How do your technical skills allow you to grow such a concept?

Coming from a painting background, I came into sculpture with quite a messy and dirty technique, but I let it be like that, and it turned out that I liked doing it the ‘wrong way’. For instance, with latex, I was supposed to pour it carefully into the mould, but actually, I did it the wrong way to try something new. It gave me a more instant expression. At times, being used to traditional techniques makes the work enter a certain frame, whereas what I wanted to say about sculpture and how I wanted to expand my work was more fluid; let it drop and overflow. I thought, ok, let’s break some rules, see how far they can be broken and how I can use the pieces, whether they are ‘failures’ or not.

Do you wish for your sculptures to communicate with the audience somehow? Do you want them to breathe like us or remain objects for opinion?

I always have my own intentions and ideas about my sculptures. Sometimes I have favourite parts of a work and what it is supposed to be. However, once the sculpture is out of my studio and leaves my hands, it is not mine anymore. Sculpture should have its own agency, and it should be able to deliver certain things to different people but without the arrogance of a god. I like to leave it up to viewers with what they see. Sometimes it is very different, and I think, ‘that’s ok’.

How does it feel to separate yourself from them? And how do you feel about your work as a whole?

I feel strange. I do a lot of drawings, but they are not necessarily related to the outcome. Some parts of a drawing can be involved in this outcome, but the journey is only partially planned. Once I have finished a piece, I think, ‘what are you?’. Sometimes I feel alienated from the sculpture, and other times I feel attached to it. It’s a weird mixed feeling because I never planned to make this sort of work. After completing a sculpture and it is sitting in front of me, whether it is the scale or material elements, It still takes me by surprise.

They also possess a depth that seems personal. Rather than being shells or a disregarded snakeskin, they could almost be seen as extensions of your personality. Is your working method related to this emotional connection?

I make my sculpture in a way that fits my personality. My working method is who I am. I am always slightly rushing, determined and sometimes slightly clumsy and rough. But my character is shown throughout my work, and it’s funny to see it, but the gestures do show.

Are they autobiographical?

They express how I feel, but they aren’t autobiographical. Many artists take inspiration from their experiences, so some of my experiences are embedded into the process and final outcome. But then, for me, it often gets separated; the initial idea that exists when I start a work sometimes changes while I’m working as my thought process goes into a meshed structure rather than a linear method.

When you are in the process of making these artworks, what do you feel and see? What sort of environment do you put yourself in (besides the physical surroundings of a studio)?

Not too often, but sometimes I get into a trance. It feels like a buzzy, feverish and floating sensation when I really concentrate, but that could also be the caffeine and exhaustion. When I get highly focused and concentrate so much, I get absorbed into the process so much that my body disappears and it is just my brain and hands.

How do you want people to react to these works? The sculptures are hardly embodiments of peace and harmony. At least in the conventional, Edenic sense. Sci-fi characteristics emerge when words like ‘hybridism’ and ‘cyborg’ are thrown around. Still, your work takes a step further by removing the past and melding present silhouettes into alien forms articulated to a raw framework you have created. How do you react to sci-fi labelling and labelling in general?

Hybridity has been such a significant term that has circulated, but it is now a natural concept at this point. With sci-fi, the concept is a current metaphor for our imagination and society. It is a present-term idea that moves around our dreams and narratives. There are many bodies today that are very attached to artificial material, and I see the hybrid concept as a phenomenon that already exists. I was always more into manga and animation, so I got more ideas from these magazines than from traditional sci-fi; I didn’t grow up with it, but lately, I’ve been watching all the classics, but only as an adult. My works are about what I see and observe, but people can receive them as one ‘type’ of art. It is the same with science fiction: it gets categorized as one thing. The artist Ivan Pérard says, ‘Sci-fi’ is a modern fable’, which I very much agree with. Animism and mythology operate around nature and culture, and science fiction mirrors society just as much. It is about our life as it stands now.

And what do you want to change this attitude?

It is essential to keep talking about art in a way that doesn’t limit terminology and simplifies the language that describes it. In my work, there are lots of languages of monstrosity, and people immediately think of the artist, H.R. Giger and how many monster-esque forms are coming back in art.

“The sculptures embrace distinct ambivalent emotions.”

For me, the works are in a status of becoming. I want people to discover hope in the form of reflection on our current society. It is necessary to focus on the details and have more sub-categories to be aware of.

Do you think your work promotes that concept?

I hope so. I have been trying to find a way to communicate it with metamorphic presences, blending the ‘me’ and ‘you’ and ‘us’. For that reason, I worked more into the human form to express a language of monstrosity that is less misunderstood and more anchored. Making these forms relatable makes them beings you can communicate with. Components resembling human body parts communicated and specified what I wanted to say.

These sculptures have their own weight. They possess a dense mass that stands perfectly. They support themselves just like Francis Bacon’s creatures in his Crucifixion paintings did. There are various rods and stabilising factors involved. However, these prodding protrusions make the artwork whole by grounding the body and creating a proportionate form. How do you want your work to stand?

Through wires and steel supporting the sculpture’s weight, they can look weightless and rooted to the ground at the same time. Being in the air is a nonhuman thing, and my works take components of human anatomy beyond bodily function. I want them to stand with natural and artificial elements growing from this body coexisting.

And towards what environment do you see them moving?

I want to explore all sorts of locations. I don’t just want my work in white cubes. I’m working on this sculpture park exhibition in the Netherlands which will be interesting; the surroundings there are radically different, which will also dramatically affect how the sculpture behaves and how it is interpreted.

Your production has led to your works avoiding the limbo between weightless futility and a heavy, immobile mound. In many senses, the fact that these works float yet are still weighed down by gravity makes them appear as embryonic creatures captured in stasis. Do your choices in materials and proportion impact the presentation/display of your works and their ultimate impact on audiences?

Proportion is only one part of the decision-making on form, so it’s hard to say it’s the ultimate effect, but it is crucial that my works have a certain openness. With Devouring Chaos (2022), I liked having a balance between the human anatomy, electrical wires and wooden branches that poke out of the skins. The branches make the piece float in the air and, at the same time, stay rooted to the floor as if it were a plant. I like having a duality and coexistence of weight and weightlessness, a growing and wilting being. I find that concept really interesting, and I want to explore it further in a different direction.

A word that sparks to mind when observing your work is protuberance. Not only in the content of your subject matter, (as it juts out of a human shadow with the suddenness of a razor-sharp guillotine) but the context of these protrusions. Do you want your artwork to jut out from the norm?

“I want them not just to jut out of the norm but to stretch out the norm and expand normativity. These forms convey that we are all simultaneously different and alike; it is the form that decides the content just as much as the content decides the form.”

How do you decide what form these sculptures will ultimately take?

In the beginning, the size of the works themselves is planned. Because of shipping, the scale is regulated for practicality. When I started working on my latest pieces, I fixed their average size first. However, the forms then develop and grow out of my imagination, and with Devouring Chaos, I got the idea of this fazing face and legs frozen in motion from a long exposure picture. Showing constant movement across frames in a particular image was an interesting visual element that led to a transition in the movement process.

Your expertise in gleaning used and disregarded materials comments on the extremes of consumerism and assists in communicating the issues regarding the state of the environment today. How do you see your art playing a part in the way we move forward?

I would like to embody specific thoughts and concepts in my sculpture. They are metaphors and suggestions. Let’s say a viewer could see a broken iPhone cable as part of my work and wonder, ‘Yeah, I do have a couple of broken smartphone cables somewhere at my home, too’ Then it’s a good start.

And the ultimate goal for them?

Being born abroad and living in a foreign country is frustrating, and you sometimes feel like you do not belong. Even the concept of nationality is weird for me here, and within Vienna, I live in a bubble where I only speak English. It is weird but interesting. I want to explore the possibilities of representing the body in this way. For example, the issues of hyper-consumerism and the ecological crisis come up in my sculpture with aesthetics and materials providing belonging in an extended body. I want to embrace more possibilities of the body. I am not just ‘me’, but I am a human. I consist of thousands of cells, fluids, and microorganisms living with me. This comes out in the work with not only the mechanical components and broken machines, but also branches and formed figures that look like microorganisms and then faces. I try to use macroscopic with microscopic imagery to comment on both the body as an individual entity and the world as a whole.

There’s no missing one of your works. Not only do they jump out with their presence, but they are wholly yours and could be produced by no other artist but you. The structures you make are transformed into a veritable presence that catches the eye in a second. Is there more to be done?

I want to keep creating and working on my career. The practice I want to promote is one where humans are not in the centre of the world, but I want my sculpture to coexist with the world in a way that expands certain areas of thought but not in a ‘core’ social sense. I am happy with what I have been able to make, and I try to give credit to myself instead of just being a perfectionist and asking myself every time, what more should I have done? But sometimes, you just can’t push it further because of budget, time or energy.

Are you confident in the artwork you produce?

There is always room for improvement, but the best thing is to be able to learn from your work and improve upon it the next time. Looking back, I did my best work within a limited time, and although it is difficult, I always want to improve. However, I am happy with what I have done and what I will continue to do. Sometimes you have to move on and keep working on the next piece.

“My confidence is in my desire to explore more possibilities.”

Credits

Yein Lee & Nour Jaouda, Installation view 2022, Paulina Caspari, Munich. Photography by Thomas Splett
Detail, devouring chaos – growth of reconstructed time, overflowing bodies, and static electricity. Photography: Courtesy of the artists and Loggia, Munich/Vienna
Yein Lee & Nour Jaouda, Installation view 2022, Paulina Caspari, Munich. Photography by Thomas Splett
Yein Lee & Nour Jaouda, Installation view 2022, Paulina Caspari, Munich. Photography by Thomas Splett

Tag: NR 17

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